What happened

Shares of Nvidia (NVDA 3.71%) tumbled on Friday, falling as much as 2.4%. By the time the market closed, the stock was still down 0.4%.

The tailwinds from the semiconductor specialist's recent Global Technical Conference (GTC) gave way to reports that Microsoft's (MSFT -2.45%) big Windows 11 22H2 update had caused a series of problems for gamers using Nvidia's graphics processing units (GPUs).

So what

A growing list of game players reported a laundry list of performance issues after downloading the update, according to an article by the website Bleeping Computer. Users with Nvidia GeForce graphics cards experienced stuttering and considerable lag during game play. One user reported a massive drop in usage of the central processing unit (CPU) in "all my games [making them] basically unplayable." Others reported that CPU usage, which was normally in a range of 50% to 60%, dropped to only 5% after the update. 

Reports from a number of users revealed that rolling back the update seemed to resolve the issues, at least anecdotally.

Now what

It isn't unheard of for updates to wreak havoc on various systems' functionality until the bugs are worked out with subsequent releases. For its part, Microsoft hasn't yet acknowledged the issue or provided any specific guidance to correct the problem.

Meanwhile, Manuel Guzman of Nvidia Quality Assurance said the semiconductor specialist is aware of the issue and is urging users in a Reddit thread to provide feedback and specific details of the issues they're experiencing.

For now, Windows users who also have Nvidia gaming GPUs installed would do well to delay installing the latest update until the companies have tracked down the source of the issue and issued a fix.

For Nvidia investors, this is business as usual in the ongoing quest to integrate with various systems created by others. It doesn't affect the investing thesis for Nvidia -- not one iota. The company is still the undisputed leader in the discrete desktop GPU market, with 80% share, while also being a staple in the largest cloud computing and data center operations. 

There's little question that the faltering economy will weigh on Nvidia stock in the short term, but business will come roaring back once the economy rights itself.

Nothing to see here, folks. Move along.